Books about Dubious from Amazon.com

Are four million women really battered to death by their husbands or boyfriends each year? Does a young person commit suicide every thirteen minutes in the United States? Is methamphetamine our number one drug problem today? Alarming statistics bombard our daily lives, appearing in the news, on the Web, seemingly everywhere. But all too often, even the most respected publications present numbers that are miscalculated, misinterpreted, hyped, or simply misleading. Following on the heels of his highly acclaimed Damned Lies and Statistics and More Damned Lies and Statistics, Joel Best now offers this practical field guide to help everyone identify questionable statistics. Entertaining, informative, and concise, Stat-Spotting is essential reading for people who want to be more savvy and critical consumers of news and information.
Stat-Spotting features:
* Pertinent examples from today's news, including the number of deaths reported in Iraq, the threat of secondhand smoke, the increase in the number of overweight Americans, and many more
* A commonsense approach that doesn't require advanced math or statistics .
Price: $13.57 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as blackspine Penguin Classics featuring eye-catching, newly commissioned art. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon Is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and Tortilla Flat. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers—and to the many who revisit them again and again..
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For the first time in one volume, the early California writings of one of America's greatest novelists have been collected, including the seminal works, Tortilla Flat and Of Mice and Men, tracing his early growth and evolution 20,000 first printing .
Price: $18.84 [Notify me when price goes down.]

His internationally best-selling Griffin & Sabine saga is treasured for its blend of lyrical storyline and compelling, imaginative art. Now Nick Bantock gives a short course in visual creativity in Urgent 2nd Class. A tour through the techniques and materials which constitute his signature style, Bantock shares with readers numerous ways ways of using old paper ephemera -- maps, letters, postcards, ledgers, scraps, photos, and many more items -- to create their own idiosyncratic art. Written for people of all artistic skill levels, the materials mentioned are all easily found and inexpensive, and the processes are simple enough to do at home (and with access to the most advanced machinery used in the book, a photocopier). An inspirational guide to the simple artistic techniques which can alchemically transform ephemera into remarkable works, Urgent 2nd Class is the handbook for a new generation of visual poets..
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The first paperback edition of a myth-breaking book on media, from one of today's most reputable and insightful media historian/critics. Winner of Harvard's Goldsmith Book Prize, Rich Media, Poor Democracy challenges the assumption that a society drenched in commercial information "choices" is a democratic one. Robert McChesney, whom Marc Crispin Miller calls "the greatest of our media historians," argues that the major beneficiaries of the so-called Information Age are wealthy investors, advertisers, and a handful of enormous media, computer, and telecommunications corporations. This concentrated corporate control, McChesney maintains, is disastrous for any notion of participatory democracy. Combining unprecedented detail on current events with historical sweep, in a book Noam Chomsky calls a "rich and penetrating study," McChesney chronicles the waves of media mergers and acquisitions in the late 1990s. He reviews the corrupt and secretive enactment of public policies surrounding the internet, digital television, and public broadcasting. He also addresses the gradual and ominous adaptation of the First Amendment as a means of shielding corporate media power and the wealthy, and he debunks the myth that the market compels media firms to "give the people what they want." In an eye-opening call to action, McChesney warns that we must organize politically to restructure the media if we want democracy to endure..
Price: $8.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As her little boy plays at a day care center across the street, Michelle, an unmarried teenager, is in algebra class, hoping to be the first member of her family to graduate from high school. Will motherhood make this young woman poorer? Will it make the United States poorer as a nation? That's what the voices raised against "babies having babies" would have us think, and what many Americans seem inclined to believe. This powerful book takes us behind the stereotypes, the inflamed rhetoric, and the flip media sound bites to show us the complex reality and troubling truths of teenage mothers in America today.

Would it surprise you to learn that Michelle is more likely to be white than African American? That she is most likely eighteen or nineteen--a legal adult? That teenage mothers are no more common today than in 1900? That two-thirds of them have been impregnated by men older than twenty? Kristin Luker, author of the acclaimed Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, puts to rest once and for all some very popular misconceptions about unwed mothers from colonial times to the present. She traces the way popular attitudes came to demonize young mothers and examines the profound social and economic changes that have influenced debate on the issue, especially since the 1970s. In the early twentieth century, reformers focused people's attention on the social ills that led unmarried teenagers to become pregnant; today, society has come almost full circle, pinning social ills on sexually irresponsible teens.

Dubious Conceptions introduces us to the young women who are the object of so much opprobrium. In these pages we hear teenage mothers from across the country talk about their lives, their trials, and their attempts to find meaning in motherhood. The book also gives a human face to those who criticize them, and shows us why public anger has settled on one of society's most vulnerable groups. Sensitive to the fears and confusion that fuel this anger, and to the troubled future that teenage mothers and their children face, Luker makes very clear what we as a nation risk by not recognizing teenage pregnancy for what it is: a symptom, not a cause, of poverty.

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Price: $18.80 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Take an enchanting tour through the tangled roots of English

Quick, what is the common denominator of the following words: onion, twinkle, travel, squad, foist, semester, October, noon, and dicker? By the time you finish reading Dubious Doublets, the answer will be as obvious to you as the relationship between lettuce and galaxy, nostril and thrill, or witch and vegetable!

This surprising, enlightening, and entertaining guide uses a delightfully innovative approach to explore the evolution, lineage, and proliferation of words. Beginning with pairs of seemingly unrelated modern English words–dubious doublets–the author traces them back through the millennia to reveal not only their common roots, but also the living thoughts that form the true links between these improbable pairs.

You’ll discover, for example, why the words flamenco and flamingo are both related to the complexions of the Dutch, how the biblical son of Isaac is related to a French garment and a Halloween decoration, and what going berserk has to do with playing hopscotch. You'll also uncover the common roots of such seemingly incompatible dyads as bully/friar, muscle/mouse, and everyone’s favorite, feather/hippopotamus.

Richly supplemented with cultural anecdotes, literary excerpts, and lively discussions on a broad variety of relevant topics–not to mention a series of whimsical illustrations that offer intriguing clues to word origins–Dubious Doublets is, quite simply, a word buff’s delight. .
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Most anyone interested in such topics as creation mythology, Jungian theory, or the idea of "secret teachings" in ancient Judaism and Christianity has found "gnosticism" compelling. Yet the term "gnosticism," which often connotes a single rebellious movement against the prevailing religions of late antiquity, gives the false impression of a monolithic religious phenomenon. Here Michael Williams challenges the validity of the widely invoked category of ancient "gnosticism" and the ways it has been described. Presenting such famous writings and movements as the Apocryphon of John and Valentinian Christianity, Williams uncovers the similarities and differences among some major traditions widely categorized as gnostic. He provides an eloquent, systematic argument for a more accurate way to discuss these interpretive approaches.

The modern construct "gnosticism" is not justified by any ancient self-definition, and many of the most commonly cited religious features that supposedly define gnosticism phenomenologically turn out to be questionable. Exploring the sample sets of "gnostic" teachings, Williams refutes generalizations concerning asceticism and libertinism, attitudes toward the body and the created world, and alleged features of protest, parasitism, and elitism. He sketches a fresh model for understanding ancient innovations on more "mainstream" Judaism and Christianity, a model that is informed by modern research on dynamics in new religious movements and is freed from the false stereotypes from which the category "gnosticism" has been constructed.

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